Vettel happy to go back to ‘normal’ tires in Monaco

Sebastian Vettel was not content after the Spanish Grand prix in which he finished fourth. His teammate Kimi Raikkonen did not finish the race.

“Our tires didn’t last as long as for the others, so we couldn’t follow the same strategy. We had to stop again and we obviously lost two positions, and also a bit of time during the pit-stop itself. But staying out was not an option. We had problems finding the right balance of the car and we were struggling with the front tires. Maybe the changes for the weekend had a bad impact on us, worse than the one the others had”, Vettel commented.

“So, I am happy to go back to ‘normal’ tires in Monaco as we seemed to struggle a little bit more than the others. We just didn’t have the right pace, Mercedes was faster than us and we hadn’t many chances. We tried our best, but something was missing and we need to improve on this. During the whole weekend, it has been tough to find the right balance on these new tires. But I see no reason for not being optimistic for the next race.”

Vettel happy to go back to ‘normal’ tires in Monaco

Raikkonen said that his race was going pretty OK until the mechanical problem stopped him.

“I was in a decent position and the speed was good. I was running smoothly and saving the tires. Everything could have been alright, but unfortunately, it did not happen. At one point I started losing power; I managed to drive around but obviously not at full speed anymore, so I drove back to the garage. We don’t know more than that about the issue we had. We need to take the car back to the factory and check what happened. Looking at the Championship, this result is far from ideal, and I’m pretty disappointed. There is nothing we could have done differently, but we need to try and keep pushing.”

“In many ways, this is a weekend in which nothing went right”, team principal Maurizio Arrivabene admitted. “Now, calmly and with accuracy, we need to analyze the reasons, and they are various, which prevented us from exploiting the potential we demonstrated in the previous races. Then we will prepare for the upcoming Monaco Grand prix, in a professional, determined and confident manner.”